The Corner: A Dangerous Wonder

Mike Yaconelli was indeed a dangerous man.  It is often said that no practical joke was safe within a 5 mile radius of God's Holy Jester. 

That is not the kind of safe, funny danger that Mike represented for me. Mike represented the type of danger that is potentially harmful or risky.  He embodied a faith that seemed undomesticated, one that Parker Palmer had in mind when he said that the "inner journey is to know that creation comes out of chaos, and that even what has been created needs to be returned to chaos every now and then to get recreated in a more vital form".

I first ran across the chaos Mike created in the Door, a ray of sunshine in the safe churchianity that I experienced growing up in the Bible belt.  We would exchange our copies of the Door like kids trade MP3 mashups nowadays, like contraband.  Our excitement and private joy at  Mike's musings hits at the core of the word "heresy" which comes from the Greek αἵρεσις, hairesis (from αἱρέομαι, haireomai, "choose"). Mike punctured the oppression we experienced that faith was only right thinking - Mike reminded us of a pre-Constantinian community of Jesus-followers who blew on the flames of Jesus stories, rather than codifying the ashes of that flame into bound doctrines.

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Mike Yaconelli was indeed a dangerous man.  It is often said that no practical joke was safe within a 5 mile radius of God's Holy Jester. 

That is not the kind of safe, funny danger that Mike represented for me. Mike represented the type of danger that is potentially harmful or risky.  He embodied a faith that seemed undomesticated, one that Parker Palmer had in mind when he said that the "inner journey is to know that creation comes out of chaos, and that even what has been created needs to be returned to chaos every now and then to get recreated in a more vital form".

I first ran across the chaos Mike created in the Door, a ray of sunshine in the safe churchianity that I experienced growing up in the Bible belt.  We would exchange our copies of the Door like kids trade MP3 mashups nowadays, like contraband.  Our excitement and private joy at  Mike's musings hits at the core of the word "heresy" which comes from the Greek αἵρεσις, hairesis (from αἱρέομαι, haireomai, "choose"). Mike punctured the oppression we experienced that faith was only right thinking - Mike reminded us of a pre-Constantinian community of Jesus-followers who blew on the flames of Jesus stories, rather than codifying the ashes of that flame into bound doctrines.